Company in the News March-2021

See what PlayGround Writers, Alumni, and Company Members are up to as we get ready for the March 15th Monday Night PlayGround on Zoom!

Madeline Daly Puccioni’s MONTICELLO 2020, which asks what if… Thomas Jefferson had retained the paragraph in his Declaration of Independence which would have ended America’s slave trade with the British, and eventually, abolished domestic slavery here? MONTICELLO 2020 will zoom for NYC’s Playhouse Creatures Theatre in their New Plays Festival on March 13th and March 15th. Tix are free, but of course they appreciate donations: HERE! Madeline’s WAR BABIES, featured in PlayGround’s Monday Night Series in 2018, will be published in Qu Literary Magazine, and her SATURDAY NIGHTERS, about Georgia Douglas Johnson, whose Anti-Lynching plays helped to pass the Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill in 1938, will be a Dramatists Guild Footlights selection, zooming March 28th. THE SATURDAY NIGHTERS premiered for Towne Street Theatre in 2017. Her short play exploring the suffrage movement, 1913, directed by Lana Richards, will be featured in the March 15th Monday Night PlayGround.

Two short environmental justice plays produced by Same Boat Theater Collective – an Innovator Incubator company that includes PlayGround members Linda Amayo-Hassan, Lynn Aylward, Reg Clay and Lisa Kang – were chosen to be performed as part of the Red Curtain International Good Short Pl@y Festival. Same Boat plays R2G2 and Homed Again? will join performances of pieces from China, Australia, Iran, India, Philippines and Canada to benefit struggling artists in India. https://www.theredcurtaininternational.org/festival

Ely Sonny Orquiza On March 1, 2021 Founder and Co-Artistic Director Ely Sonny Orquiza just publicly launched the new Filipinx American theater company based in San Francisco called The Chikahan Company. The Chikahan Company is a proud cohort member of Playground’s Innovator Incubator program. The company’s inaugural production will occur in Fall 2021 with a new play written by two local Filipinx American playwrights examining and celebrating the contributions of Filipino healthcare workers within the medical industry in the United States. To support and get updates from the company, give us a LIKE on Facebook or donate: HERE!

Aaron Higareda just received acceptance into the University of California, Riverside’s Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts M.F.A. program! He also has received an invitation to interview with Columbia University School of the Arts M.F.A. Playwriting Concentration! He’s crossing his fingers for more acceptance letters but is proud of the offers thus far. If you would like to read more about Aaron’s playwriting journey you can check out his blog: HERE! or feel free to follow him on Instagram at HERE! You can also catch him performing his adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land with Same Boat Theater Collective March 28th and April 9th at 6pm (PST)!

Lynn Aylward’s Same Boat Theater Collective, a diverse team of Bay Area and international playwrights, directors and actors created through Playground’s Innovator Incubator program, will explore Latinx and Latin American environmental issues in Terremoto/Earthquake, a livestream performance festival written, directed and performed by artists from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and the San Francisco Bay Area. Performances run from Friday, March 26 to Sunday, April 11. Find the link for tickets HERE!

Alex Moggridge has released an all audio version of his play Simon Dawes Becomes a Planet (inspired by a 10 minute play he wrote for Playground) for free streaming. It was recorded remotely by 20 actors around the country, including Broadway and film regulars (Daniel Jenkins, Michael Shannon, and others) Find the link for free tickets HERE!

Gwen Loeb On March 12 @7, Julia Brothers and Gwen Loeb will be doing a developmental reading of Patricia Cotter’s hilarious and touching new play, “I’ll Give You Something To Cry About”, with dramaturgy by M. Graham Smith. If you’re interested in watching, please contact Gwen for a link at HERE!

Maury Zeff‘s ‘s full length play MERCHANT OF STRATFORD will receive a Zoom reading by Ross Valley Players March 19 (7pm) and March 21 (2pm). This reading is a mini PlayGround reunion, with director Gabriel Grilli and featuring Nancy French in the cast. Two performances, here are the Zoom registration links: Friday, March 19, 7pm: HERE! Sunday, March 21, 2pm: href=”https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6EqbUJv_QsC7ZA8daFFzlA”>HERE!

Katja Rivera and Evelyn Jean Pine’s play, THE INVISIBLE PROJECT will be the inaugural script for Latinx Mafiia’s Incubator Series, Sunday March 21 at 6pm.

Louis Parnell is continuing taping “The Sins And Secrets Of Tabard Lake” a 10 episode podcast for 3 Girls Theatre that will premiere in April. The 10 episodes were written by over a dozen women writers in the Bay Area. He will also be directing and acting in a Zoom presentation of a new play by Susan Jackson entitled SAMARITAN.

Lauren Gorski’s “A Feminist Revisionist History of Rosemary’s Baby” will be featured in an upcoming reading of Spark Creative Works “Women’s Playwriting Project”. Find the link for tickets HERE!

Eric Fraisher Hayes is directing a series of site specific filmed Eugene O’Neill monologues entitled The Ghosts of Tao House. The first installment of the monthly series can be viewed at HERE!

Bacilio Mendez II Bacilio is a lawyer* now. … *He’s just not your lawyer..

Tom Bruett‘s short play Mom’s House will be part of the Atlantic One Act Play Festival in NYC in spring 2021. Find the link for tickets HERE!